Letters to the Editor for Wednesday, Aug. 21

Letters to the Editor for Wednesday, Aug. 21

Trump tags people he opposes with an adjective prefix added to their name. How about one for him?
His rationalizations for gun violence are: ”Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” And now: “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.” Logic is beyond him, since without the gun, there would be no killing using guns.
This faulty reasoning, always put forth by officers of the NRA, causes him not to push to expand the use of background checks and ban assault rifles. Mental illness is a problem. Sixty percent of deaths by guns are suicides. But tracking the mental state of owners of 393 million guns is impossible. The only solution is to drastically reduce the number of guns.
Guns are killing people every day. A young boy in New York City, an excellent student, while playing basketball was shot and killed by two other youngsters who were nearby playing with guns. Where are the laws and regulations that would have prevented this? Isn’t Trump’s lack of leadership partially at fault for this and other recent killings?
Trump trumpets racial bias, which emboldens white supremacists to shoot and kill as many people of color as possible aided by the use of assault rifles.
The destruction and loss of life caused by climate change isn’t admissible by him. He continues to reduce power plant and automobile emission requirements. This will result in thousands of more deaths caused by air pollution.
How should we tag him?
Dale M. Brown
Niskayuna

For humanity’s sake, end detention camps

While my private summertime is filled with pleasant activities, I have been plagued by the images of immigrant children detained in crowded cages and facilities with inadequate medical care, insufficient food, and squalid sanitary condition, with no towels and toothbrushes or clean clothes.
This is not fake news but documented by the United States Government Office of Inspector General after inspecting several Department of Homeland Security detention centers.
These reports have been collaborated by doctors, legislators and journalists, and pictures do not lie.
Further, mental health officials, and doctors have documented that such experiences for children will result in “lifetime trauma, and disturbed development.”
While former administrations have detained and deported immigrants, the Trump administration has added scapegoating, racism and hatred, whipping up irrational anger and hostility toward immigrants. As history has taught us, scapegoating a specific group, usually a minority, is dangerous with ugly and disastrous results.
Let us not forget the lynching of innocent black people and Jim Crow, the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Holocaust slaughtering of 6 million Jews or the massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda, to name just a few horrors of history.
To mistreat any minority group, whether it be people of color, immigrants or Muslims, is dangerous and not compatible with a nation of diversity and democracy. The vilification of any group of people is a denial of their humanity and becomes a rationalization for mistreatment. To deny a human being’s humanity is to deny your own humanity.
Close the detention encampments now.
Mabel Leon
Schenectady